Online poker is a fun and entertaining hobby. If you like to play poker at the tables, try your luck at some online poker with these five tips.

Manage Your Bankroll

One of the most frustrating aspects of online poker, or gambling in general, is that one day you’re up, the next day you’re down. Keep loses to a minimum and maximize your winnings by properly managing your bankroll. Improper bankroll management is a key mistake for amateur poker players, so watch your bankroll to avoid a rookie mistake. A good rule of thumb is to never put more than five percent of your total bankroll in on any game.

Don’t Play When You’re Bored

If you only play online poker when you’re bored, then you’re likely to lose. You’re likely to experience more drastic swings when you’re feeling bored. For most people, if you’re playing poker while you’re bored, then you’ll probably play too many hands or risk higher stakes to try to escape boredom. Plan your play time and you’ll be much more successful.

Take Notes

Whether you’re playing online poker at Sportsbook or just practicing the game, you’ll want to take notes. Take note of what your opponents are doing and their style of betting. This will help you spot weak points and discover how you can get the upperhand with your opponents. If you take notes on enough showdowns, you will be better prepared to make an educated decision with your play.

Learn from the Professionals

Most pro poker players only play at higher levels, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t still learn from the professionals. Online poker is different from live poker, so you’ll want to know how the best in the game actually play. There are websites dedicated to showing online poker tournaments so you can learn more and see the more advanced techniques.

Play Multiple Tables

Playing more than one table at a time will ensure that you don’t put all your money on just one table. Multiple tables also helps you keep your focus, which is easy to lose while on the internet. Start with two tables and see how well you can manage. If you can still play a good game and take notes at the same time, then you are in control. Once you lose the ability to take notes while you play, then you are at too many tables and need to cut back.

After Harry Reid failed to get an online poker provision passed in the lame-duck session of Congress at the federal level, several states are now pushing the issue as people realize that it’s foolish not to tax and regulate online gambling.

In Iowa, there’s a new bill that would regulate and permit online poker, and this follows a bill passed in New Jersey that has been sent to the governor. There’s also a push in Florida and California.

Hopefully, cash-strapped states will drive the agenda here, as the federal government won’t act due to the religious right.

Online poker is huge business on the Internet, but American companies are prohibited from participating due to a bill slipped in by the Republican congress back in 2006. Now, Harry Reid is trying to reverse that by legalizing online poker in the lame duck session.

While the odds are against him with opposition from the holier-than-thow Republicans, the chance still remains as more commentators are pointing out the benefits of changes in the law.

Let’s start with the most obvious reason to permit online poker: It happens anyway. An estimated 7 million Americans already log on to poker sites every month, according to one study. But the sites they visit operate outside the purview of U.S. law because they’re located offshore. That means players aren’t protected from fraud or cheating. If they get fleeced by another player, their only recourse is to complain to the site. Gambling sites like Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker are self-policing. If someone’s perpetrating a fraud scheme, it’s up to the sites to punish them. They usually do—after all, they want to protect their reputations—but it’s not a foolproof system. When an employee at a site called Absolute Poker allegedly cracked the system and looked at everyone’s cards, he was caught, but the money he won by cheating wasn’t recouped. If one of the poker companies disappeared tomorrow and took all its customers’ money with it, they’d have no recourse.

Reid’s bill would bring all this activity under the regulatory umbrella: Set up a licensing system, create standards for who can play, and enforce the rules.

Legalizing the game would also raise tax revenues. The Joint Committee on Taxation scored an online gambling bill sponsored by Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., as generating $42 billion for the federal government over 10 years, and $30 billion for state and local governments. That’s probably a little high, since it would legalize not just poker but all Internet gambling and since it assumes all 50 states opt in, says John Pappas, executive director of the Poker Players Alliance: “I think more realistic is between $15 and $20 billion over a 10-year period.” That’s not going to eliminate the deficit. But it’s enough to make lawmakers look twice. Whatever the tax revenue, critics of online gambling argue that the social costs of legalization could be even higher. Chad Hills, a spokesman for Focus on the Family, pointed to an admittedly rough estimate that legalizing online gambling would create $25 billion annually in social costs—aggregate losses from bankruptcy, crime, and other negative impacts of gambling addiction.

The strongest argument should be the libertarian one – why should the government be telling us how we can amuse ourselves? Of course, the religious right loves to tell us what to do, and it will be interesting to see if we’ve reached a tipping point where poker players say enough!